Learning electronics as I go… What’s going on with that large capacitor @neilferreri ?
From a bird’s eye view, what the J-tech offers is support, documentation, fast set up (plug-and-play), machine specific (for OEM) mounting solutions, and safety peripherals (ie glasses, lock, etc…) all bundled.
I think it’s like most things, if you have the time and energy; resources and tools; and the know-how, you can create comparable setups to what other companies put together. Modifed Creality Ender 3 vs Prusa mk3s with its track record/support/out of the box features is sort of a parallel.
Just to flavour the pot further, anyone got experience of Endurance lasers? They have a great sale on at the moment 10W output laser with all the trimmings for $545 with FREE world wide shipping. I feel a bit woozy.
To keep the EMI away. That’s a standard on some of the older boards. The original one I had couldn’t do anything without disconnecting. The newer boards made space by getting rid of some weird logic management of the removed “abort” input.
Short version: C3D’s cap, not mine.
Funny you should bring this up, I was cruising around the internet looking at endurance lasers last night, found a few old posts on this site about them, nothing substantial though.
I’ll be searching for more videos, examples and comparisons today.
Seems like he has his stuff together though. Free shipping and an included air pump are incentive enough to at least do more research.
This really started to resonate with me overnight and today I decided to cancel my order for the Ortur laser. My workshop is part of my business and Health and Safety concerns started to pull my chain. I still think that there is nothing wrong with going down this route if you know what you are getting into.
I always leant towards the JTech but could not get around the costs. I started to look else where and that led me to the Endurance which looked good (and maybe is) but got freaked by Michael Laws (Teaching Tech) review.
So I reached out to JTech about shipping costs and they replied and well, I bit the bullet and bought a JTech 7W laser.
This is not to say that the JTech does not present with safety issues it absolutely does, but I think they do a great job of mitigating some of them.
@neilferreri We use our laser to engrave our logo onto all of our products.
We also have products that the customers can order with personalization.
We also use it to make prototypes out of corrugated cardboard.
We got ours with the High Resolution lens focused at 1\8”. So we aren’t able to cut through any material thicker than 1/8” since the laser will come into contact with the work piece.
I could refocus it, but I don’t want to risk loosing the great results I am getting now.
I will have to do it in a few weeks. We are working on a new product that is made of 1/8” ply. We want to cut it out with the laser, so I will have to change things up soon.
Thanks @Jairo. One of the main things I had hoped to do was cut cardboard for templates and layouts. In my brief tests, I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that with the 7W (2.5W output) NEJE. Engraving looks possible, but raster engraving takes so long.
I got the thing because I was curious…then I had hopes. I’ll still give it some time (not sure I’m focusing correctly), but then you might see a “Cheap Laser for Sale” post in the future.
Yes, I actually made a mount that used Cricut blades, but there’s an appeal to not having to mess with workholding. I have access to, and frequently use, a 45W CO2 laser… It’s hard to not compare.
Yes, on raster art, that is where this JTech laser really shines! Sub $200 Chinese laser took 5 hours to do raster art on a cutting board. JTech 7W laser on SO3 XXL maxed out for speed made it in 18 minutes. That’s a price I can pass on to the client, but not 5 hours.
I know of some people that have had some luck with those big Chinese lasers. I’m in Alaska, it’s in the USA, but most of the time when it come to shipping and service our shop is in the dark side of the moon. So quality American made products are a must. Hence why we chose Carbide 3D and JTech.
I’ve been using a 60 watt CO2 laser from JIN ZHI YIN for over a year now and it’s still doing great on the same laser tube with heavy use. The only thing I added to it a was a few high quality lenses and used a computer liquid cooling gear instead of what came with it.
I haven’t used LightBurn, but I can’t think of a reason why it wouldn’t work. I don’t know (yet) if that module is worth connecting to an SO3, though. It seems pretty weak (= slow), unless I’m cutting paper or doing vector engraving, I guess.
I’ve got a couple things to do, and then I hope to get back to messing with the laser.
The attached picture was engraved on the back of my leather phone cover using the Snapmaker 1600 MW laser module. This cover is very old and you can see that the leather started to tear down, also the image was not centered on the cover. I will do it again on my new phone cover and show you the result. It will be much better than this old one.
I’m not sure what are you planning to do with the laser. I have 5 or 6 different laser modules, and a 60 Watt CO2 laser. The weakest one is the original Snapmaker laser module which is 800 MW. I added the upgraded version which is 6500 MW. I also have a 5 Watt, 7 Watt, and 20 Watt Chinese modules.
I wish I have taken pics of all that I did on different lasers to show you. But all was done for friends and families. I will make sure to take pics of each job I do from now on.
Not much…I had hopes that I could cut corrugated cardboard, but looks like I’d need to do a couple passes with a Z change. It seems to engrave fine, and a vector engrave, like what you showed, would be no problem. Raster engraving is painfully slow.
With the 20 Watt output rated Chinese module that I have, which is actually about 12 to 15 Watt of real output power, and not 20 Watt as they stated, compared to my 60 Watt CO2. It cuts 5mm of perch plywood in just 2 passes with power set at 90%.
